Category Archives: WTF

Last week I was walking around in Manhattan looking for a place to grab a bite to eat between meetings, when I happened across a new location of Barcade, one of my favorite beer bars in Brooklyn. This one served food, so I went in and planted myself at one of the empty bar stools and ordered a sandwich and a beer. I chatted with a friendly bartender who told me this branch opened in June, or May—he couldn’t remember.

While I waited, I sipped my beer and journaled into the notebook I always carry, lost in thought as the bar started to fill up around me. I was only vaguely aware of three bartenders huddled together on the other side of the bar chatting until one thing I overheard jolted me out of my writing trance and caused me to look up in alarm.

“Wow, someone’s looking to get raped tonight.”

I stared at them in shock as the three of them all laughed. They dismantled to go about their work again, and one of them started stacking condiments in front of me.

“Did someone really just say that?” I asked.

“What?” he asked innocently, obliviously.

“That one of your customers is looking to get raped tonight.”

“Oh,” he said with a chuckle. “Yeah, well you know, it’s these little girls who come in here and order a wheat beer and a shot of vodka, and then chase it with a shot of Jameson. It’s not very smart decision-making.”

I glared at this 40-something hipster and the smirk beneath his unkempt black beard in disbelief.

“Yeah, well, that’s not very smart commentary,” I said.

He slunk away and refused to make eye contact with me thereafter, sipping a glass of straight vodka at 5:30pm. I tossed a coaster on top of my half-empty beer and walked outside to smoke a cigarette. The comment had activated a kill switch deep within my psyche, and my head spun from the transition of being jerked out of my happy writing place into the menacing world of skeezy rape enthusiasts. The amount of people who can successfully execute rape jokes are few and far between, and, as Lindy West pointed out in an essay following the Tosh.0 debacle, the punch line should never come at the expense of the victim. What planet did these guys inhabit where it was acceptable to suggest, or even logical to think, that any human being would want to be raped? Rape involves the utter absence of consent. It is an unwanted violation of one’s body, by definition. No amount of beverages consumed ever changes the level of acceptability of rape, which is zero.

I walked back inside and sat down, but the thought of finishing my drink made me sick. I wanted to throw the rest of it in that guy’s face and smash the glass on the floor, or walk out without paying. But that would make me the greater offender form the perspective of the law. What could I do to establish some kind of justice for the disruption of my peace of mind, and for whoever was exposed to these dirtbags on a daily basis. I wanted to do something so they would never laugh about rape again.

I hailed my original bartender over.

“Hey, I need to pay for this drink,” I said. “And you’d better believe that if I wasn’t expensing this because I’m here on a review assignment, I would have walked out without paying after what I just heard.”

His face blanched. “What… what do you mean?” he stammered.

“Saying one of your customers is looking to get raped? Look, if you’re going to make jokes about rape in your place of work, you’d better be damn sure you know who’s listening, and this is definitely going to affect your review.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry you had to hear that,” he said. “I didn’t say it I swear.”

“But you laughed.”

He continued apologizing and acknowledged the comment was unacceptable. I thrust a $10 bill toward him and asked for my change, then walked out without leaving a tip.

It is hard to believe that these kind of sentiments are circulated here in a city that is often said to be the most cultured in the United States. Then to think of how many other places in America and beyond that this kind of shit happens without anyone raising an eyebrow makes the world seem downright depressing. We have a long way to go, but I’d like to think we’re progressing, one indignant feminist calling out stupid hipster bartenders at a time.

The Robert H. Lurie tower, University of Michigan College of Engineering campus. Photo via Khürt Williams/Flickr/CC.

Following the publication of my last blog post on Gizmodo yesterday, I received a lot of comments from women and men who said they had experienced cyberstalking situations similar to mine, some not as bad and some far worse.

So I decided to email the Dean of my alma mater’s College of Engineering this FYI:

Dear Dean Munson,

I attended the College of Engineering from 2004-2006 and ended up transferring to LS&A. I thought you may be interested as to why. I recently published this article on Gizmodo about an experience with cyber stalking that I unfortunately had my freshman year, and I thought you may be interested to know this kind of thing is happening on your campus, and how it affects the targets. I strongly feel that incidents like this are one cause of the enormous gender disparity that exists within the engineering school. I hope you find some value to this, and please feel free to contact me if you would like advice on ways the college could do more to stop harassment against women.

I was surprised to receive the following response about four hours later:

Erika,

I am sorry to hear about your experience. Actually, this is the first such experience I’ve heard of in Engineering at U-M. Although I think that cyberstalking is a really bad thing, I have to disagree with your conclusion that incidents like yours “cause the enormous gender disparity that exists within the engineering school.” Our problem regarding gender is that not enough women students from high school apply to study engineering in the first place. This is true nationwide. At U-M, our retention rates for women and men students in engineering are nearly the same. So, once a woman enters CoE, she is very likely to stay and complete an engineering degree.

Thank you for sharing your story. I meet with undergraduates often in CoE (including lots of women) and I will be on the alert for the type of misbehavior you endured.

–David Munson

Today I sent my reply:

Dean Munson, thank you for your prompt response.

With all due respect though, sir, why would you have heard about such an experience before? When I went to DPS, I was told nothing could be done and was dismissed. With such an “oh well, deal with it” response to my — and any woman in a similar position’s — first impulse in seeking intervention regarding such a matter, why then would a student take the issue up with the dean? When I was a freshman, I never realized that was an appropriate plan of action or even an option. In fact, I never received any kind of notice of a campus resource for addressing instances of harassment in the College Engineering — information that is readily distributed in LS&A. While you are on the alert for this kind of misconduct in the future, I would urge you to also have conversations with the north campus Department of Public Safety in addition to female students. Perhaps they could provide you with statistics about how much this kind of incident is reported so that, rather than citing a lack of anecdotal evidence as evidence that something isn’t occurring, you could cite hard information.

To clarify, I didn’t say incidents like my specific stalking incident cause the gender disparity. I said that incidents like mine (which if you read or even skimmed the essay to the point where I explain why I dropped out you would understand was a reference to the persistent sexual objectification from male students and even once a professor I endured) are *one* of the many reasons I *believe* contribute to the gender disparity. For you to tell me that it’s not is, frankly, offensive. Furthermore, noting that the retention rates are nearly the same for men and women says nothing about the causes of the dropping out. I would be willing to bet that the breakdown of dropout causes are very different for women than what they are for men.

The problem that you cite as being the reason for gender disparity in the College of Engineering — that female high schoolers do not apply to engineering school — is a problem that is often caused by the same factor I cited in my essay that you dismissed: sexism. Unless you think that women are not inherently as good in science and math as men are, in which case I’d urge you to remember the Larry Summers incident, explore and the volumes of research that indicate the contrary, and revisit this hypothesis.

Thank you again for your response. In addition to my own experience in the University of Michigan College of Engineering, I now understand an additional factor that sustains the gender imbalance on your campus: your denialism. Thank you also for making me the most happy I have ever been that I did not pursue a career in engineering.

Regards,

ARIKIA

(not Erika)

I also sent it to Kelley Adams, my college friend I reference briefly in the story who is now a Project Manager at MIT’s Violence Prevention Response Center. She linked me to the CDC’s recently-released findings from the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) which contains statistics on many different forms of violence, including stalking.

From the report’s Executive Summary:

Stalking Victimization by Any Perpetrator

One in 6 women (16.2%) and 1 in 19 men (5.2%) in the United States have experienced stalking victimization at some point during their lifetime in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.

Two-thirds (66.2%) of female victims of stalking were stalked by a current or former intimate partner; men were primarily stalked by an intimate partner or an acquaintance, 41.4% and 40.0%, respectively.

Repeatedly receiving unwanted telephone calls, voice, or text messages was the most commonly experienced stalking tactic for both female and male victims of stalking (78.8% for women and 75.9% for men).

More than half of female victims and more than one-third of male victims of stalking indicated that they were stalked before the age of 25; about 1 in 5 female victims and 1 in 14 male victims experienced stalking between the ages of 11 and 17.

Thanks for the stats, Kelley. Hopefully when the University’s PR team finds this via Google Alert, they’ll be nice enough to forward this to Dean Munson so he can consider it while he is on the alert.

Shortly after I started this blog a little over a year ago, I started the FOUND at the Internet Garage series to share all the amazing crap I find at the charmingly dysfunctional Internet cafe where I work on the weekends.

This one takes the cake.

Today I was sitting at the help desk, Internetting and stuff, while my coworker Mike dug around in the shelves behind me looking for a part for the laptop he was fixing.

“Yo, need any birth control pills?”

“Probably.” I said, turning around to find him holding two months worth of Yaz. “Oh, nevermind. That stuff makes people crazy. Why do you have that?”

“I don’t know, someone left this bag here the other day,” he said, holding up an Urban Outfitters tote bag.

I got up to examine the contents and found the most perplexing combination of items I have encountered at the Internet Garage to date. I immediately went to the scanner to document the contents, as I usually do when I find strange things in that place.

Like this:

The advertisements in fashion magazines have long been accused of harming women, lowering their self esteem by creating unrealistic expectations that lead to self-image problems and self-destructive behaviors like bulimia and anorexia. I don’t know about the validity of those claims, but my cousin recently encountered one serious and bizarre danger between the pages of a fashion magazine that required medical attention.

This is my cousin Heather in all her usual gorgeousness:

Now here’s a picture of Heather after flipping through the December issue of Elle Magazine:

Yes, that’s really the same person and no, there was no photo editing in this picture.

What you’re seeing is an extreme allergic reaction caused by a sprayable perfume sample of a fragrance called (no joke) Alien, by Thierry Mugler. On the Sephora website it is described as “Radiant and mysterious, the elixir of absolute femininity.” That’s funny, last time I checked, embracing one’s feminity didn’t involve acquiring contact dermititis with severe edema of the upper eyelids — symptoms that appeared within 20 minutes of Heather’s contact with the ad.

“I played with the thing trying to open it and must’ve gotten it on my hands. Then because the smell bothered me so much it made my eyes itch and I rubbed them with my soiled fingers,” Heather told me in an email. Luckily, she works at a hospital and was able to take Benadryl within five minutes of the onset of symptoms and a PA there gave her a shot of prednisone when it got worse. “I couldn’t see that whole first night and could only open my right eye a slit the next 24 hours. After continued Benadryl use every 4 hours, I had a full recovery after 4 1/2 days.”

She still doesn’t know what specific ingredient in the perfume caused the reaction, but she’s going to tell me when she figures it out (right??). In the mean while, I am going to steer clear of Alien. Probably fashion magazines in general, for good measure.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened Monday night (when a psychotic man tried to follow me home). The encounter really shook me to the core of my being. I’ve also been thinking a lot about how I handled the situation, and how other women could diffuse a potentially violent encounter.

I think one of the reasons the situation didn’t escalate to anything physical is because I did this:

When I turned around and fiercely asked “Are you following me?” instead of looking afraid and continuing to walk forward, it no doubt threw him off-guard and caused him to re-think his initial plan of simply tailing me. He was way bigger than me, and my doing that was the equivalent of what the little puffer fish puffing up to say, “Don’t even TRY to eat me or I will fuck your day up.”

Like this:

After a night of baking pumpkin bread (well, consuming pumpkin bread. I didn’t actually take part in the baking) and watching the original version of Beauty and the Beast with one of my lady friends, I stopped in to have a margarita at my favorite bar. I tutored the bartender’s daughter in chemistry this spring, and he wants me to help his other daughter pass a test now. I’m not good with little kids but I’m great with teenagers. I still remember what it was like to be one and can relate. I took a car service there, $6 to anywhere in your neighborhood, and the driver told me how he used to live on my block, and how it used to be dangerous. “Is it better now?” I asked, knowing that many people are restful towards the gentrification. “Oh yes, no crime is always better than crime.”

After a rousing conversation with Charlie, the bartender, I began to walk home, the same route I’ve treaded hundreds of times since I moved to this apartment about a year ago. Not that I have gone to that bar hundreds of times, but it’s on the way to lots of stuff, and from it.

Anyway, I was about to turn onto my block when i noticed a man in front of me. He appeared to be in a daze, like he was tipsy or on drugs or something. But when he saw me, something in him kind of… changed courses. He perked up, slowed his step and turned his posture to address me when I walked past.

“Hey, do you have an extra cigarette?” he asked, smiling congenially.

“No, sorry,” I said and kept walking. There was nobody else on the street but the two of us.

“Has anybody ever told you how beautiful you are?” he called after me.

It’s lame when people use those kind of crap lines on women in the middle of the day, to impress their friends or something; it’s scary for it to be communicated in isolation in the middle of the night. “Yeah, they have,” I muttered, quickening my pace. After I’d gone about five steps I heard the man’s footsteps slow to a halt. A few more steps and I realized that he had actually turned around and was walking behind me, following me, going in the complete opposite direction from which he’d come. I felt my sympathetic nervous system activate as I turned onto my street.

I walked passed the corner bodega, and looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, the man had followed my onto my street and was moving faster.

I think this must the point where some people freak out. Or where women don’t freak out like they should and second guess themselves out of the instinctual distrust they feel towards certain individuals, and keep walking — and eventually running towards their apartment. Because they’re so close, almost there, even though they’re moving away from potential help. It’s the horror-movie scenario that was mocked in Scream: Why are women always running upstairs when they should be running out the front door?

Well, I’ve scoffed at enough dumb broads in horror movies to not let myself become one of them. My mind was racing, and with every step I took forward, I felt my options being eliminated. So I stopped walking. I turned around, looked the guy in the face, and started walking toward him.

“Are you following me?” I demanded to know.

“What’s your name?” He asked. He leered creepily at me.

“Because it really looks like you’re following me, and that’s not a good idea.”

I was completely talking our of my ass, of course. Probably. I’ve gone to one Kung Fu class and one Krav Maga class, and between the two I feel like I could’ve landed a solid punch if I needed to — I was ready to — but obviously I didn’t want to have any physical contact.

“I just wanted to know what your name is, so I could tell you how pretty you are,” he continued, stepping to the side to intercept my path. But he was too slow, and I darted past him.

“I’m not interested,” I said, making a go for the bodega. When I reached it, my momentum was met firmly by the resistance of the locked door.

Neighborhood secret: The bodega is open 24 hours. And while the worker may lock the door at night, someone is still there to make sales through the bullet-proof window.

“Habeeb!” I yelled, banging on the glass. It’s a term of endearment in Arabic that my roommate and I refer to the bodega guy as. My roommate doesn’t know Arabic, she just heard me say it and started calling him that one day, like it was his name. It was funny and it stuck, and he’s come to know that it’s us behind the glass when we call through it to get beers at 4am or whatever. And tonight he knew it was me at the door, and he rushed around to open it.

As he fumbled to find the right key, I turned around and looked at my potential attacker, who was backing away, and I glared triumphantly at him. Not this time. And when Habeeb opened the bodega door, I collapsed inside, and he locked it behind us. Bodegas may not be stocked with tampons when I need them, but they sure do come in handy sometimes.

I stayed in there for about 10 minutes, called my roommate to see if she was home and tell her what happened. She was at her boyfriend’s, so Habeeb went outside first to make sure the guy was gone and stood on the corner and waited for me to walk down the street to my apartment.

Disaster averted.

I don’t know what would have happened if I had handled the situation differently. And I’m glad that I don’t have to know, to have to bear the memory of an attack for the rest of my life. But it could have been bad, I think. Generally, I try to think the best of people, but there are alot of fucked up individuals in the world, and for that reason I will never let my guard down. Not completely.